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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22581574">first blood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdomdizzy/pseuds/kingdomdizzy'>kingdomdizzy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Confessions, First Battle, Hurt/Comfort, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:08:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,301</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22581574</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdomdizzy/pseuds/kingdomdizzy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>He removed his lance and twirled the tip in the dim light, watching the blood glisten like a ruby freshly polished and placed so nicely into his hand. The corpse at his feet was no longer at the front of his thoughts; he wanted more of this feeling, whatever it was.</p>
  <p>He wanted more <i>blood</i>.</p>
</blockquote>In which Sylvain and Felix taste their first blood.
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>first blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It had been bandits. They were coming from the north, thought to be Almyrans that had somehow snuck their way through Fodland’s throat and were now terrorizing a nearby village. There weren’t many, so Garrech Mach had been called only for those still awake and ready for battle. Being so early in the school year, many students were still awake and ready to fight. </p><p>However, no practice battles had taken place, yet. For many, this would be their first taste of battle.</p><p>Felix, having been at the training yard sharpening his sword, didn’t hesitate at the call to action. He sheathed his sword and headed back towards his room to put on his battle armor without so much as a second thought. </p><p>Sylvain, on the other hand, did. He watched as Felix disappeared out the doors, his own lance still ready to be thrust into a training dummy, and froze. All his life he’d heard of battles, how they made your heart pound and filled you with adrenaline as you ripped through your enemies. He remembered seeing the aftermath of some of those fights, torn flesh and stained clothes. </p><p>He remembered what it had done to his friends. </p><p>As he walked out of his room, dressed in his best second-hand armor, he saw Felix, no signs of doubt on his face and his sword held firmly in his hands. “Let’s go,” he grunted, brushing past him towards the stairs. Sylvain turned to watch him go, feeling the heavyweight of his lance on his arm as he followed.</p><p>The march to the town didn’t take long, much to his disappointment. He kept looking to the other soldiers for their fear, their small signs of hesitation but came up empty-handed. He kept his eyes forward.</p><p>They were greeted with civilians hiding under buildings that were not being ransacked, children screaming as the sound of glass shattering echoed through the streets. All the students listened to the professor’s orders and began their attack, including Felix who took off towards a building on the other end of town. Sylvain followed him, pushing past his fear of being taken down along the way.</p><p>When he reached where Felix was hiding behind the doorpost, he scowled at him. “What are you doing here?”</p><p>“What, I can’t be part of the fun?” He jested. Sylvain hoped that the more he joked the more the fear in his voice would disappear. It must’ve worked because Felix rolled his eyes. </p><p>“There’s three of them in there, if we take out the first two quickly, we can easily overpower the third.”</p><p>Sylvain nodded, sneaking a glance inside where the bandits were rustling through bags of food and supplied, stuffing whatever they could find into sacks at their feet. His brain pictured the route he would take, sidestepping the table in the center to knock the man onto his feet and stab his lance into—</p><p>His heartbeat increased. He’d worry about that when he got there. </p><p>Felix started counting down with his fingers, starting at five instead of three which told Sylvain that he was just as nervous. <i>4… 3… 2…</i></p><p>They both took visibly deep breaths and raised their weapons as they charged inside. </p><p>Sylvain followed the plan in his head, letting his feet lead him to the bandit. The man looked at Sylvain, then to his lance, eyes wide with fear and an apple in each of his hands. Sylvain knocked him down with the hilt of his lance, unable to look the stranger in the eye as he reeled his weapon back.</p><p>“Goddess, forgive me,” he whispered, then plunged the steel tip into his chest. </p><p>Everything around him turned quiet. Sylvain could hear the blood in his ears, hammering underneath his breastplate, the vibration of his muscles that held his lance in place. His eyes stayed on the point of impact, pupils blown wide.</p><p>There was something; it may have been the sound of bone being punctured, the feeling of give when it twisted into the man’s heart, the smell of blood as it poured out of the hole left behind and flowed to the bottom of Sylvain’s boots. It was something, and after a few moments of that precious silence, it made Sylvain smile. </p><p>He removed his lance and twirled the tip in the dim light, watching the blood glisten like a ruby freshly polished and placed so nicely into his hand. The corpse at his feet was no longer at the front of his thoughts; he wanted more of this feeling, whatever it was.</p><p>He wanted more <i>blood</i>.</p><p>Sylvain’s eyes flicked up to the other bandit, the one he and Felix were supposed to kill together, but he couldn’t help himself, couldn’t hold himself back. He wanted it all for himself. He pushed himself forward, shoving aside the chairs and tables that were in his way, and thrust out his lance, this time burying it in the bandit's stomach and <i>twisting</i>. </p><p>A laugh, one that later would haunt his own nightmares, fell out of his mouth as blood splattered onto the floor. The man collapsed in front of his feet, choking on the blood that was erupting from his throat and tried to say something, but Sylvain couldn’t hear over the rush that whirled in his ears. </p><p>As he looked down, he saw that his whole front was covered in splattered blood. He wasn’t quite sure when that had happened, but he knew that this armor would need to be thoroughly cleaned. His clothes were most likely unsalvageable.  </p><p>Behind him, he heard a muffled grunt, and he remembered. <i>Felix</i>.</p><p>Sylvain turned, ready to hear his best friend talk of the same rush he had felt from the first fight, eyes wide with adrenaline and blood draped on his sword, but his face fell. </p><p>“Felix?”</p><p>The sound of his lance clattering on the ground grew distant behind him as he ran to his friend on his knees in front of the bandit’s corpse, eyes still open. Felix was looking at his hands, covered nearly up to his elbows in blood, muttering to himself. </p><p>“Felix? Hey, buddy, you’re okay, right?” Sylvain felt around where he could, checking for open wounds or cuts that he couldn’t see, all the while Felix kept mumbling too quietly for him to hear. “You gotta speak up. Are you hurt?”</p><p>“He asked me why.”</p><p>Sylvain paused, kneeling down to be at his level. “What?”</p><p>He swallowed thickly. “I… I stabbed him, and he looked at me and asked me why. Then he—” Felix clenched his bloody hands into fists— “He wouldn’t let me go. He held onto me as he died. He… just wouldn’t let go.”</p><p>“Hey, hey.” Sylvain lifted up his face doing his best to wipe away the splatters of blood on his cheek. “You did what you had to do, right? He was stealing things from innocent people, he could’ve killed someone. You did what you were supposed to do.”</p><p>Felix remained silent as Sylvain hoisted him up, throwing his arm over his shoulder and dragging him to the rest of the students, leaving their carnage and bloodshed behind.</p><p>“You did what you had to do.”</p><p>+++</p><p>The sound of running water echoed off of the empty tile walls of the bathhouse. Sylvain dipped his hand into the water to test the temperature and found it suitable enough to turn the faucet off. “Okay, Felix,” he said, and looked back.</p><p>Felix was sitting on the ground, bloody armor and clothes discarded, staring at nothing. Sylvain had used his own shirt to try and wipe off some of the blood on his hands, but most of it had already dried next to dirt and sweat. At the mention of his name, Felix glanced up, eyes tired and… sad. A type of sad that Sylvain hadn’t seen in a long time.</p><p>He let out a sigh and pushed himself onto his feet, reaching out a hand. “C’mon.”</p><p>After a considerable amount of consideration, Felix reached up to his own blood-stained hand and followed Sylvain to the side of the bath. </p><p>It didn't take long for the water to turn a murky dull red as Sylvain washed off Felix’s hands. Felix avoided eye contact, instead resting them on the tiles lining the floor in quiet contemplation. Sylvain didn’t push for words; he had learned that Felix moves through things at his own pace, but nothing of this sort had happened before. There were no guesses to how long he would remain in this stoic state. </p><p>Sylvain gently cleaned the blood off of his face, earning a small flicker of eyes to his own. Progress of some sort, he thought. He then began draining the water and refilling again, this time clean and adequate to wash the sweat and grime out of their hair. Felix, expectedly, remained still. </p><p>Once the bath was full, Sylvain carefully took down Felix’s hair. This, at least, caused his eyes to close, leaving Sylvain in awe. Not from the beauty, though that quality itself could leave Sylvain with thousands of incomparable ideas, from the strange amount of trust that Felix must feel in order to do that simple act, close his eyes. </p><p>Just as Sylvain’s hands started running through the pieces of Felix’s hair, his voice rumbled deep in his chest. “What’s the answer?”</p><p>He paused, thinking about what question Felix was asking about because he knew that if he had to ask, Felix would shut down again. Sylvain’s hands started moving again, cautiously. “I told you out there, you did it because you had to. We had to.”</p><p>Felix snorted. “What a dull answer.”</p><p>“Better to die with an answer, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p>Pause. </p><p>Sylvain sighed. “What was it, Felix? What happened?”</p><p>He was thinking; Sylvain could almost feel the small intricacies of his brain moving beneath his scalp as he massaged in the soap. It wasn’t until he started rinsing out those suds that he began an answer. </p><p>“The blood.”</p><p>He remembered the sound of bone, the warm smell of that dark, liquid jewel on the tip of his lance. </p><p>“We’ve both seen enough of it for our whole lifetime,” he continued, “there had just… never been that much at one time, all in one place. All… because of me.”</p><p>Satisfied with how clean his hair was, Sylvain moved around so he was facing Felix, gently tilting his whip up until their eyes met. “He made his choice. It wasn’t all your fault.”</p><p>Felix blinked up at him. “What’s your answer, then? Why?”</p><p>Something suddenly tugged in his gut; sitting here, looking at his best friend, he couldn’t deny the strange flutter that erupted in his stomach and fogged up his mind. In some indescribable way, it reminded him of that feeling when he saw the blood, an instinctual type of chemical reaction. This time, however, it wasn’t to kill— it might’ve been the opposite. </p><p>He moved his hand from his chin to his cheek, gently brushing it with the pad of his thumb. Felix, the unpredictable man, leaned into it, not breaking eye contact. “I fight for my friends, to keep them safe,” he whispered, “I fight for the people I love.”</p><p>Felix’s eyes widened slightly, cueing to Sylvain that he knew exactly where this was going.</p><p>“I fight for you, Fe.”</p><p>They waited there, Sylvain watching as Felix studied his face to make sure that this wasn’t some sick joke or a pleasurable phrase such as the ones used on multiple other encounters. His face remained dormant, and he only broke the silence to sat, “Turn around.”</p><p>Sylvain obliged and instantly fell lax at the feeling of Felix’s fingers running through his hair, beginning to damped it before following the same procedure and scrubbing his scalp with soap. They had done things like this before, albeit very rarely and when they were children, but never in this way, never this… intimate. </p><p>The tone between them had most certainly shifted; Sylvain could feel it, and from the slight hesitation sometimes felt in Felix’s hand, he knew he felt it, too. When his hair had been washed out, they retired from the baths and dried themselves, leaving each other with small fleeting touches like brushing away loose pieces of hair or wiping up missed drops of water, and walked back to their rooms. </p><p>As they neared where their rooms split, Felix reached to grab a soft hold of Sylvain’s wrist. They were pulled to a stop in front of Felix’s door.</p><p>“Could you…?”</p><p><i>Stay with me</i>, Sylvain thinks—knows—Felix means to say. He chuckles slightly at the blush creeping up Felix’s cheeks before pushing himself into the room, Felix still in tow. </p><p>They stay up later than they should have, simply whispering back to one another under the sheer sheets, making note of how tired they’ll both be during the professor’s lecture tomorrow, but both unanimously decided that it will be worth it. After they did fall asleep, not too soon before the sun came up, Sylvain writhed and squirmed at the laughter, his own demented and blood-thirsty laughter, that plagued his nightmares. </p><p>Felix shook him awake, wiping the sweat off of his forehead and gently pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. Sylvain fell against his chest, the rhythm of his heart lulling him back to sleep.</p><p>They missed the lecture completely, earning them an earful and scornful eye from Byleth, but neither of them seemed to mind. </p><p>Felix took out his sword in the training area, staring at the sharp end that glinted in the sunlight a little too long, then to Sylvain, who had just picked up a training lance. He bumped against Felix’s shoulder with a wink. “Stay sharp, Fe. Got a lot to fight for, right?”</p><p>He smiled back. “Hmm. Right.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sylvix is always in my head so i just wanted somethin... soft? but w blood?</p><p>follow me on twitter to see all my fe3h rt's lmao @kingdomdizzy</p></blockquote></div></div>
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